TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2026
Also, goodbye Kennedy Center: True story!
Last Friday, we never made it to the medical mission. Making a long and frigid story short, we were wrong when we assumed that it doesn't snow in the subway.
Once they determined that no trains would be running, further chaos ensued.
As a result, we're to the mission today on a makeup assignment. We won't be posting today, not even about this essay in the Washington Post:
The grave risk of Trump’s Kennedy Center shutdown
Last fall, workers at the Kennedy Center slapped a coat of white paint over the gold-hued columns that connect its upper terrace to its plaza, apparently at the direction of the man who effectively appointed himself chair of the center’s board, President Donald Trump.
It was a seemingly small intervention from a man who fancies himself a connoisseur of architecture, but of course, it made no architectural or visual sense. Now, the all-white columns disappear against the building’s white marble cladding, and so too the lovely symbolism of the narrow, modernist metal supports, which look more like the strings of a musical instrument than the traditional, heavy stone supports of a classical structure.
Now there is grave concern from artists and patrons that the institution itself may disappear. Sunday night, Trump announced a two-year closure for renovation beginning in July, which sounds ominously like a complete rebuild of the structure. Trump added Monday that he wasn’t “ripping it down” but then went on to describe a process that could tear the structure down to its steel framing.
Given Trump’s sudden demolition of the White House’s East Wing in October, and the mix of vague promises and bombastic language in his social media post, which promises “a new and spectacular Entertainment Complex,” it certainly seems possible that the 1971 building, designed architect Edward Durrell Stone, could be partially or completely erased...
And so on from there.
The column was written by Philip Kennicott, the paper's long-time art and architecture critic. A letter expressing a similar concern—"Watch for another wrecking ball"—has been published by the New York Times. The letter comes from a former chief editor of Architecture Magazine.
Is it possible that these fears are well-founded? We don't have the slightest idea. We can tell you this:
These peculiar events will keep occurring until we're prepared to discuss what seems to be sitting there right before us. Of course, these peculiar events would almost surely continue to happen even if we did decide to have that discussion.
This is the silence we've chosen. All in all, it seems like the best we can do.
No one has been silent about Trump’s behavior. There have been protests about the Kennedy Center.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the Kennedy Center has been the venue of many terrific artists and presentations, I don't think the federal government should be in the auditorium business. It obviously violates the tenth amendment.
ReplyDeleteRight, Trump shouldn’t have taken over the board or had any involvement.
DeleteFuck you, dickhead, you fucking trump lick spittle asshole fascist freak
Delete@8:05 - I could not agree more. Trump is already overly busy dealing with difficult, challenging, very important domestic and international issues. He should not be giving a single millisecond's thought to the Kennedy Center
DeleteGo take a flying fuck, dickhead, the only thing king chickenshit is dealing with is selling out our country to line his pockets, you fucking asshole
DeleteIt violates the tenth amendment? Do national parks also violate it? The museums in DC? I’m what way is the government enjoined from operating a theater or park ir museum? You’re ridiculous DiC.
DeleteIf Trump lined up people and shot them all, he would be an innocent compared the whole of the Democratic party so filled with lying, cheating, freaks with no
Deletemorals becoming millionsires and monsters at the expense of taxpayers.
I will continue, with all my heart, to support Donald Trump until the day that he has been proven to have sodomized a girl under the age of 13.
DeleteThe girl’s word is not enough (combined with independent testimony of so many others and his conviction for libeling E. J. Carroll when he called her a liar)?
DeleteThe flipside of David's point: Trump is only fucking up the Kennedy center, instead of sending the entire world into the abyss. I am all in favor of Trump messing up buildings. It's the least amount of damage he can do.
DeleteOh, and the Kennedy Center is in DC . What does it have to do with the 10th amendment?
DeleteHe could have used it to run a continuous loop of that masterpiece "Melania". About the woman who speaks 9 languages, none of them English. She's lived here for how many decades and can barely complete sentence in proper English.
DeleteThe federal government has no business being in the border security business.
DeleteDavid in Cal,
DeleteGood luck getting Trump to not spend a millisecond, or hours upon hours a day, thinking about Ivanka's vagina.
Epstein Island is what you get when you won't let Republicans fuck their own children.
Delete“ This is the silence we've chosen.”
ReplyDeleteDespite the lack of silence about Trump’s actions, Somerby is talking very specifically about the silence about the the idea that Trump is mentally ill.
I think.
Why does Somerby think this would make any difference?
It is hard to prove that someone is mentally ill who can correctly identify the cartoon of a giraffe. Of course, we have only Trump and his doctor to verify he got that correct. Trump with 40,000 lies and counting, and his misfit physician who claims him to be remarkably healthy, cankles and all.
DeleteDemocrats need to admit their mistakes.
Delete11:05. You first, MAGAt.
Delete11:05,
DeleteI apologize for not realizing the Republican Party is a global pedophile ring sooner.
5:27,
DeleteYour bigger mistake is not saying out loud sooner.
I apologize for not realizing Elon Musk rigged the last election.
DeleteHyman Roth : “This is the business we have chosen “ Godfather Part II
ReplyDeleteJasmine Crockett has a Senate seat all but locked up.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about that. It's Texas; she's black and has 2 X chromosomes. That said, Texas has spoken loud and clear this week in two state races, and it's looking pretty grim for the Republican party in November. Couldn't happen to a more deserving party.
DeleteIn the giant scheme of things, as offensive as Trump's usurpation of the Kennedy Center is, it doesn't even make the list of 10 shittiest things he has done.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a distraction of the things he hasn’t done. Such as raise a single finger to help the middle class.
DeleteIf there wasn't a Republican voter who wasn't a bigot, the Right would still come here and pretend there was one.
ReplyDeleteRemember when David in Cal used top come here and pretend he knew something about economics, so he would write that he was concerned about the deficit, every time the Democratic Party tried to use the government to help poor people?
ReplyDeleteI miss those particular lies, from David.
Oh for the halcyon days of quoting that world class economist, Thomas Sowell.
Delete@10:34 - Do you mean the Thomas Sowell who graduated from Harvard, Masters Degree from Columbia, and Doctorate from the University of Chicago? The Thomas Sowell who was a professor at Cornell, Brandeis, and UCLA, and who wrote nearly 50 books?
DeleteQuoting Sowell's bio is not the same as quoting Sowell, but we really don't need either here, David, or you. Somerby went away. You can too.
Delete@6:10 - Stein's law applies: If something cannot go on forever, it will end.
DeleteInterest on the National Debt rises as the National Debt rises. It's now the largest item in the budget -- exceeding military spending at $1 trillion per year. The deficit is projected to remain at $2 trillion or more indefinitely, so interest on the national debt will grow without limit.
Interest on the national debt is now over 20% of income taxes collected. That leaves only 80% to spend on all government programs. That 80% will shrink each year. At some point our taxes will go to pay interest.
Clearly this is not going to happen. Something drastic will happen first.
Go take a flying fuck, dickhead, you fascist freak.
DeleteSomething drastic? Like you fucking fascists raising taxes on billionaires? LOL - never happen
ReplyDeleteAs a Democrat, here's what I know: America is a Nation that can be defined in a single word: Iwuzindfutmhmafut!
And that's ALL I know!
“the horrors of MAGA aren’t dividing us anymore. they’re uniting us. they’re uniting Americans against the tyranny of Donald Trump. Senate Democrats were right to block ICE’s funding, but it’s not enough. Kristi Noem needs to go. Stephen Miller needs to go. the monsters responsible for unleashing this havoc on cities — whether they were firing at civilians in the streets, or calling the shots from their cushy offices in Washington — need to be investigated and prosecuted. they need to know they will be held accountable. if we want our nation to remain a constitutional republic, this is the moment for courage.”
ReplyDeleteJ.B. Pritzger
"LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—King Charles III of the United Kingdom announced on Tuesday that he was cancelling his upcoming trip to the United States and would send his disgraced brother, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, in his place.
ReplyDeleteCharles gave no reason for the abrupt cancellation, saying only that Andrew was a “better fit” for a visit to Donald J. Trump.
“I’m sure they’ll have plenty to reminisce about,” Charles said. “And if they run out of activities, Trump can always give Andrew a Sharpie and put him to work redacting those bloody files.”